In the first year of the pandemic (2020), passenger transport saw an unprecedented decline. The decrease was particularly significant in air transport, but also in rail transport. By 2024, transport performance across most means of transport had returned to or exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
In the two decades before the pandemic, the following main trends can be identified when comparing transport and population change:
In the years 2000 to 2010, rail transport grew significantly faster than the population. In that decade, major infrastructure expansions (especially the Rail 2000 project) led to extended services with more frequent trains and shorter journey times. After 2010, rail transport performance increased at a somewhat slower pace.
Shortly after the turn of the millennium, passenger numbers in air transport initially fell, primarily as a result of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and the grounding of the Swissair airline. From around 2005 onwards, however, air transport increased considerably more than the population in most years, which was probably also due to the expansion of low-cost airlines.
The trend in private motorised road transport was somewhat less dynamic. However, between 2000 and 2019, this also increased slightly more than did the population. This was mainly due to greater transport performance by foreign passenger cars on Swiss territory. In contrast, the distances travelled per capita by the Swiss resident population remained more or less stable.
